Buy high, sell low and guarantee a loss. It's not exactly what Toshiba Corp. planned when it dipped its toes in liquefied natural gas trading.
Yet that's exactly how it turned out, as the industrial giant capped off its five-year misadventure in LNG on Thursday by paying ENN Ecological Holdings Co. $806 million to take its interest in a U.S. export venture off its hands. The Chinese gas distributor gets the right to liquefy and sell 2.2 million tons a year at the Freeport LNG plant in Texas, in addition to the cash.
The deal marks Toshiba's second exit from a troubled energy business this year, after it sold claims in its U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse in January. Toshiba said in a statement that the LNG business was no longer a core focus and it wanted to exit to eliminate the risk from changing market conditions.
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